Honours

Spanish
league with Real Madrid

Biography

Hugo Sánchez Márquez (born July 11, 1958 in Mexico City) is a
former football (soccer) striker, considered the best Mexican
player ever.
Despite huge domestic success, Sanchez did not have a similarly
successful international career. He played 60 matches and scored
29 goals for the Mexican national team, but it coincided with a
difficult period for the nation's football team. Mexico didn't
participate in two World Cups that could have been very
important for Hugo. He only scored one goal in the three World
Cups in which he competed and was never elected to the Ideal
World Cup squads.

Hugo retired from football on May 29, 1997, playing with Real
Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium - the stadium that
witnessed most of his glory throughout his career - in a match
against Paris St. Germain with a result of 4-1 in favor of the
Real Madrid with Hugo scoring three goals.

After four seasons coaching the UNAM Pumas, the team that saw
his birth as a soccer player, Hugo Sanchez obtained the Clausura
2004 Tournament of the Mexican League, defeating the Chivas of
Guadalajara in the final match.

He has expressed a desire to coach Real Madrid, the club where
he starred for much of his career, and also one of the best,
richest and most famous teams in the world.

On September 1, 2004, Sánchez reached another milestone as a
coach driving his soccer team, UNAM Pumas, to beat Real Madrid
1-0 at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium in the Spanish capital city.

Later that year, Hugo became the first coach to win two
consecutive titles in Mexico's relatively new short season
format ("Torneos cortos"), beating the Monterrey Rayados in the
league championship series.

In 2002, after Javier Aguirre resigned as Mexico's national team
coach, Hugo voiced his candidacy to coach the team, but members
of Mexico's soccer federation saw Hugo as too inexperienced at
the time (he had not won any sort of championship or had major
success as a coach at that moment) and eventually hired former
Argentine goalkeeper (member of Argentina's 1978 World Cup
champion squad) and seasoned coach Ricardo Lavolpe as Aguirre's
replacement. La Volpe and Sánchez have been embroiled in a war
of words since then, with Hugo expressing his obvious discontent
of being shunned for the coaching job.

He was dismissed from UNAM Pumas on November 1, 2005 after a
dismal year season. The scene was quite awful as fans hurled
debris at him as he left the cancha (field) in his last game
coaching Pumas.

Hugo Sánchez in Real Madrid

After five successful seasons in
Mexico, with 99 goals to his name, Sanchez drew the attention of
several Spanish sides, and signed with Atletico de Madrid in
1981. It took him a while to find his feet in La Liga, but by
the 1984-85 season he was scoring regularly with a team that won
the Copa del Rey, finished in second place in the Spanish League
and won the Spanish Super Copa. That year Hugo also won his
first Pichichi trophy for being the most prolific scorer in the
league.

At this point, he reached the high-point of his career, signing
for Real Madrid in 1985 and playing with players such as
Camacho, Butragueño, Gordillo, Valdano and Míchel ( La quinta
del Buitre). This team won five consecutive league titles (from
1985-86 to 1989-90), the Copa del Rey in 1989, and the UEFA Cup
in 1986. During these five years, Sánchez garnered four
consecutive Pichichi trophies, scoring 207 goals in 283 games.

Sanchez scored 38 goals in the 1989-90, tying the record of the
great Zarra and giving him a European Golden Boot for best
scorer in Europe. Overall, he scored 23 goals in 45 European Cup
games.

His trademark was to perform a celebratory somersault after each
goal he scored, honouring his sister, who was a gymnast and
participated in the Montreal Olympics.

After this fantastically successful period, Sanchez returned to
his native Mexico for a season, before playing for a variety of
clubs in Spain, Austria and the USA (he played for the Dallas
Burn in the inaugural year of Major League Soccer). He finished
his career playing for Atlético Celaya with his old colleagues
from Real Madrid, Butragueño and Míchel.

Sanchez was the only Mexican to feature in Pele's 125 Top Living
Football Players List in March 2004.